Hi all,

I'd like to announce the availability of a preview/prototype of Go for arm64 platforms.

This is based around gccgo but includes a version of the 'go' tool for your familiar "go get" experience.

This release is based on the latest Ubuntu development version, Trusty Tahr and contains gccgo 4.8 (implementing Go 1.1, and containing all bugfixes I am aware of) and a version of the Go tool built from:

https://github.com/mwhudson/faux/tree/v1.1.2

(This is a fork of cmd/go from Go 1.1.2 with some bugfixes and enhancements to work better when used with gccgo).

The easiest way to get started is to download the image I built for use with the foundation model which is available here:

http://people.linaro.org/~mwhudson/go-preview/go-tool-preview-rootfs.img.xz

To use the image, follow the instructions from

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/ARM64/FoundationModel

but use my .img rather than the ubuntu-core one, and log in with ubuntu/ubuntu rather than root/root.

If you just want to see the go tool itself, you can download binaries:

http://people.linaro.org/~mwhudson/go-preview/go http://people.linaro.org/~mwhudson/go-preview/go-static

("go" links against libgo.so.4, i.e. libgo from gccgo 4.8, and "go-static" is, I hope unsurprisingly, statically linked).

I've also uploaded the rootfs I built the image out of:

http://people.linaro.org/~mwhudson/go-preview/go-tool-preview-rootfs.tar.xz

It ought to be possible to use this with qemu as described at:

https://wiki.debian.org/Arm64Qemu

but when I tried it segfaulted. YMMV!

I'd love to hear your experiences using this, I'm sure there are bugs aplenty, but we have to start somewhere!

Cheers, mwh